The calendar says that fall is officially here, but you might not be ready to fully embrace sweater weather if your local weather is still holding on to summer. In this blog post we want to share some project inspiration for accessories that would be simply fabulous when paired with Red Barn Yarns®.

We’re very excited about the flurry of activity that has come with the kick-off of the Red Barn Yarn® Name the Yarn Promotion! That post was our introduction of the yarn and blog tour, and today we have an update! We’d like to thank the following podcasts and bloggers for helping us spread the word about the new yarn:

New Yarn Details

Our New Yarn Needs a New Name!

The new yarn is a 2-ply worsted weight yarn spun from 45% merino, 40% alpaca, and 15% mohair with 225 yards per skein. It is incredibly soft with a lovely halo, and it will be available in the vibrant dyed colorways for which Red Barn Yarn® is known. This yarn would be beautiful in sweaters, mittens, hats, scarves and even shawls!

Name the Red Barn Yarn® Blog Tour

Our New Yarn is Hand-painted in Exquisite Colors!

We’re sending our new yarn on a tour of sorts to assorted bloggers and podcasters, starting September 15. We will be posting on our Facebook page and in our Ravelry group the different tour stops as they happen, so be sure to like our page and join the group! We appreciate their help in getting the word out about our new yarn. Within their posts and episodes you will find the details on how you can get a free sample of this yarn and what you’ll need to do to enter your yarn name idea.

We’ll be awarding prizes for the top 3 submissions:

Grand Prize: 1 year subscription to Love of Knitting Magazine; a sweater’s worth of the as-yet-unnamed yarn (7 skeins, 1575 yards), and a special tag with their name on it for the first year of sales following this promotion.

Second & Third Place Runners-Up: 1 year subscription to Love of Knitting Magazine and 2 skeins of the as-yet-unnamed yarn (enough to make a shawl).

Though the weather outside may still feel like summer, the magazines that come to the mail box and the popular patterns on Ravelry are showing the early signs that fall is coming. Red Barn Yarn® would like to take this opportunity to share with you a few patterns that we think would look particularly nice in our yarns.

Accessories are a great choice to work on this time of year. If the weather is still hot they do not create a large pile of yarn on your lap and they work up quickly! The Age of Brass and Steam shawl and Autumn in the Ozarks are each currently available on Ravelry as a free download. Red Barn Yarn® Powder River is a perfect dk-weight choice for these patterns and one skein of yarn (with 260 yards in a skein) would be enough to make a small shawl or the fingerless mitts!

Unlike other bases, which start out basically a soft white, Powder River yarn starts as a lovely two-ply of soft, natural colors (camel and soft gray). The colorways translate into wonderful gray tones of the RedBarnYarn colors, creating a totally different palette from which to work, and knitters will love the lofty, soft hand of this Mountain Merino and Alpaca blend.

Each skein of this dk weight yarn has 260 yards in 3.5 oz, presenting plenty of yardage for use in a variety of projects. A perfect one skein project is Jill Wolcott’s Limestone Scarf, available as a Ravelry download. Just click here to purchase the pattern and add it to your Ravelry library! In the current issue of Love of Knitting (Fall 2014), you’ll find the Letterman Scarf, by Jennifer Burt. The sample shown above is knit with Chambray and Water Sapphire. Choose a pair of team or school colors, or your favorite color combination and cast on today!

In the recent Love of Knitting: Knit Accessories issue, the collection of patterns allows for the knitter to use a small project to learn new skills and techniques. Click here to purchase your hard copy or digital edition of the magazine. Three of the patterns use yarn hand-painted by Red Barn Yarn! These shawl patterns are great summer projects as they are portable, lightweight, and can be put to use right away to keep summer breezes or air-conditioning chills at bay.

The Wimbledon Shawl is a wonderful introduction to incorporating texture in your knitting. The shawl is knit in two sections – a cabled section to represent the racquets, and a lace section to represent the netting. The instructions include both written and charted directions. Don’t let the cables or lace intimidate you – each technique is an intentional manipulation of your knitting. Cables are simply switching the location of stitches and lace can be thought of as intentional holes! Red Barn Yarn is pleased to offer yarn kits in Wimbledon and U.S. Open colorways, click here for the details!

Peaches and Cream is a lace shawl pattern in Llama Sparkle. This worsted weight yarn beautifully sets off the Lily of the Valley lace pattern. Working lace in a heavier weight yarn can be great as a first lace project as you’ll be able to really see your progress! Stitch markers are a key material in the making of this shawl; they are used to mark each side of the center back stitch.

If you are ready for a more involved lace project, consider the Colliers Wood Shawl. This pattern is worked in the round and the clever trick of changing needle sizes creates a flutter at the edge. The yarn is Black Pearl Fingering, hand-dyedpainted by Red Barn Yarn, a luxurious 50% pearl, 50% Tencel blend. In creating this shawl, you will have the opportunity to use lifelines, work from written or charted instructions, and finish with a picot bind off.

We’d love to hear about your experiences with these skill building shawls this summer! Let us know how it is going for you by leaving a comment on this blog post, over on our Facebook page, or in our Ravelry group. We’ve also put together a Pinterest board of “Helpful Advice” you will want to check out!